Is Your Rent Too High or Too Low? Web Site Analyzes Local Rates

By Lauren Baier Kim - senior editor at RealEstateJournal.com

Tool/Web site: Rentometer.com, a Web tool that can be used by renters and landlords to measure how a property's rent stacks up against similar homes or apartments nearby. The site is a product of Investment Instruments Corporation of Newton, Mass., and is associated with iiproperty.com, a property management tool.

Function: Type in the address of a particular rental property, the number of bedrooms and the total residential units in the building, click "Analyze my Property" and the site reveals how the rent compares to other rates nearby. New to the site: searches now pull up local for-rent listings, which may include property photos and full descriptions of available rentals.


Rentometer, a tool for measuring how your rent stacks up.
How it works: Using data from listings provided by rental marketing firms and property owners/managers and listings publicly available on the Web, the site's "Rentometer" gauge provides a quick visual comparison of a property's rent to the area's rental range. Alongside, a Google map (with street, satellite and hybrid views) displays the location of the target rental unit (indicated by an orange pushpin) and comparable properties nearby (represented by green and blue pushpins).

Pluses: The site is easy to use and provides users with a quick estimate of how their rents match up against neighborhood rates. The Rentometer -- which looks like a car speedometer -- is a simple visual of how a unit's rate compares against other local rental values. A rent that falls to the left of the median on the meter is low; one to the right is pricey. Above the meter, the site spits out a paragraph summarizing whether your rent is fair, a bargain or too high. The accompanying map can be used to compare rents to comparable properties nearby -- rentals marked with plus signs have higher rents, those with negative signs have lower rates. (The map doesn't reveal the size of the rent disparities.) Renters can size up their units' amenities and costs against homes available for rent nearby. A click on a property represented by a green pushpin pulls up a Web flyer that may include a photo and information such as the size of the unit, the number of bedrooms/bathrooms, when the apartment/home is available, the term of the lease and the initial security deposit required.

Drawbacks: The Rentometer only considers a rental property's address, number of bedrooms and total units in a building when comparing rates -- so if you rent a two-bedroom penthouse in a new full-service building, your unit may be compared to dissimilar rentals -- say neighborhood basement apartments in older buildings with relatively few amenities. Rentometer's developers intentionally limited the variables -- to make it as "easy to use as possible," says Owen Johnson, president of Investment Instruments Corporation. The site has full listings for a limited sample of properties and its coverage for areas outside large metropolitan areas may be spotty. The Web site doesn't supply the exact location for all properties available for rent -- which may make actually finding those rentals (or visiting them in person) -- difficult. Exact addresses are provided only for units for which the site has complete listings available. (Clicking on blue pushpins -- properties for which the site doesn't have full information -- reveals just a unit's rate, number of bedrooms and distance from the address for which the search was completed.) Renters who are interested in finding out whether neighborhood rents are creeping up or holding steady are out of luck -- the site only offers data on current rental rates only, not past rates. Also, exact addresses are needed to use the Rentometer, so someone who isn't renting an apartment locally, but wants to check out the rents in the neighborhood, may be frustrated.

Insider tips: Last week, Rentometer added a feature that allows landlords and property managers to post their listings on the site and use iiproperty.com's free suite of online tools (more tools are available for a fee) to manage properties. Landlords/property managers who list through iiproperty.com can have their listings posted on Google Base, Craigslist, Oodle.com (a search engine for local classifieds) and edgeio.com (a Web site that aggregates and distributes listings) at no cost. Larger landlords and companies can push listings directly to the site through data feeds. Rentometer's search options may be expanded in coming months to allow visitors to search rents by neighborhood or pull up rental listings for a particular area, Mr. Johnson says.

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